


Within Reach

by spacejargon



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-05-18
Packaged: 2019-05-08 17:30:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14698977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacejargon/pseuds/spacejargon
Summary: One way or another, Sam figures it doesn't matter how he goes out. Only that he does.





	Within Reach

Maybe they’ll come.

Thoughts swarm in Sam’s head like the lazy stirrings of black water: murky and unknown in depth. Stretched out on a padded cross of a motel bed, he counts the seconds ticking by in the dark. There’s no source of light as far as the eye can see, staring up at the ceiling before the textured patterns start to mix behind his eyes.

Ruby’s off to God knows where, sickened by the conversation that had sprung up. Right after his fight with Dean, the words _you walk out that door don’t you ever come back_ on a broken record of repetition.

Yeah, so things aren’t going well.

She called him _weak._

By the bedside, there’s a pocket knife stained with blood. It keeps on dripping.

~

“Dean?”

Bobby steps into place behind Dean like a shadow stretching into place. He’s two sizes too big and just as mean when it comes to facing the light. “Dean, you listen to a word I said?”

The grunt that comes from him is noncommittal. As empty as he feels, hollowed out by the anger washed away with a scar left in its place. “Yeah, I heard you. I’m not gonna call him.”

He can feel Bobby scowling into his back. “Don’t make me go get my gun, boy.”

Dean turns on his heels, bristling. “Well we are damn near kick off for Armageddon, don’t you think we’ve got bigger fish at the moment?”

Bobby huffs at him, trying to keep a level head. Dean can see the tension lines in his face with the screwed up frown he sports, along with the mirrored tightness in his shoulders. He’s not defensive like Dean is. “I know you’re pissed. And I’m not making apologies for what he’s done. But he’s—”

“Your  _blood_? He’s my blood, is that what you’re gonna say?”

~

Dying hurts.

If somehow this doesn’t work, Ruby is going to kill him. Dean, maybe once upon a time, but the more he thinks about it, the less certain he becomes.

The fact that he’s here, solely for this _cowardly_ purpose, this stupid, ridiculous reasoning in the words of anyone who knows him, makes it hard to think of anything else. All along the steps from juggling hard rotgut whiskey to what sort of dead-end motel to end up in, he’s been thinking. The words are entirely in Dean’s voice.

_What do you think you’re doing? Why are you doing this—what are you, half a man?_

It hurt more before the first split of skin under the knife. After that, his brain got...quieter. The intensity turned down with the harder he pressed, drawing straight lines down his wrist in parallel lines. With how his hand shakes on the first tries, they could be called claw marks. He grits his teeth and digs as deep as he can, not stopping when the blood comes trickling out.

Normally, he’d be concerned about the stains he’s leaving behind. His phone is on the bedside table next to the knife, just out of reach as he sits with his arms at his sides. When he tightens his fingers into fists, he can feel his heart beat just a little bit faster, soaking his sides with blood.

His pulse warbles like a caged canary. Desperate and confused, pumping blood and in the end, losing it too. It hurts like slit wrists are supposed to hurt with a deep, jaw-clenching pain that borders on dangerous territory. Both of his arms are stained with blood and in the dark, with just slivers of light slipping through the curtains pulled over the windows, his blood glitters like a dark gem.

One of the harder truths to accept is that even though he’s bleeding himself dry, he’s never going to be free of the curse. Demon blood surges through his veins and how many people he’s drained dry, the sins count keeps getting higher. Funny, because he never used to _really_ care before.

Maybe it’s the fight with Dean. His last words to Sam after Sam had choked him straight to the brink of unconsciousness bordering on snapping his neck. The awful, gut-wrenching feeling had lingered in his hands and then soaked into the rest of him when Dean coughed and snarled at him how he really felt.

The louder parts of him think he deserves it. Feeling like this—like hell and death warmed over wrapped up in a prickly, uncomfortable sack of skin and rotten blood, it’s even harder to say out loud. Just thinking of the reply for trying to say what’s on his mind makes him want to hide under musty covers and sit in the dark to wait out the pain.

He is no coward. The others, mainly Dean, may think so. He doesn’t believe he is in this way. Killing himself? It’s not a senseless act. It’s _mercy,_ because everything Sam has caused in his life is wrong. He is to blame for so many deaths, all senseless and merciless when Sam is nothing but there to exist for being the cause.

It hurts.

~

As the embodiment of stress, Bobby is surprisingly calm. Terse, but he’s simmering instead of at a rolling boil. “He’s your _brother._ ” He keeps Dean’s gaze, his jaw working to keep from grinding his teeth. “And he’s drowning.”

“Bobby, I tried to help him. I did. Look what happened.” There are marks on his throat from Sam’s fingers, perfectly fitting the size and shape with the crevices in between the purple marks. It’s nothing compared to how Sam looked at him, like he was the only one hurting and that’s not fair to spin it like that and try to blame Dean for what he was trying to prevent.

Bobby hisses a long, thready sigh. “So try again.”

Dean moves toward him, turning his back to the window. He steps off to the side of Bobby, eyes following the floor. “...It’s too late.”

“There’s no such thing!”

“No, dammit!” He could break something if he didn’t keep his hands in his lap, clenched into fists that rip crescent shapes into his palms. “No.”

Bobby’s face pinches. A shadow falls over him and his whole expression is wound tight, eyes narrowed and his shoulders bunching.

“Gotta face the facts. Sam never _wanted_ part of this family. He hated this life growing up. Ran away to Stanford first chance he got. Now it’s like deja vu all over again. Well, I am sick and tired of chasing him.” He sits. “Screw him, he can do what he wants.”

Bobby’s mouth opens and his eyes are on him with a glare that could crumble dynasties. “You don’t mean that.”

Dean glances up from the floor, chancing it when he meets Bobby’s eyes. “Yes, I do. Sam’s gone. He’s gone. I’m not even sure if he’s still my brother anymore.” The floor is much more inviting, less angry and worn with past instances of pacing scuffed along the floorboards. “If he ever was.”

~

The air conditioner kicks off with a rattling noise. If Sam listens, it sounds like the angered rasp of voices, like demons crawling through the walls with a hiss and spit of argument as to which side Ruby’s on, and Sam, of course. What his life has to do with any of their politics, to which in more recent times, he’s not sure.

Lilith could be getting away right now. She could be anywhere after Ruby’s already spotted her. Ruby is _good_ at tracking Lilith down, almost to the point Sam wonders if there’s something else she’s not telling him with her freaky abilities. Brushing off her demonic status doesn’t seem to justify it. Well, not all of it.

Ruby does not love him. She bites and kisses and sizes him up like her next meal, but she does not love him one bit. Her eyes are like a shark’s, focusing on him when it’s necessary and when the next big thing comes, he’ll know. Lilith is a bigger fish that captures her interest while she tugs Sam along even though he’s nothing more than prey. What she wants him for afterward, the pieces don’t exactly fit together.

Her reasons are not like the click of loading a round into the chamber. Ruby is a jagged piece of the puzzle with sharp, angular edges that twist and gnarl on nearby pieces, never quite fitting anywhere he puts her. Not with demons, not with Lilith, not with him.

She could be facing the wrong way.

That’s one reason as to how she hasn’t caught on yet with what he’s doing to himself.

His breath starts to crystallize as his brain spasms, twitching behind his eyes as the flow of blood mixes with his vision. If the feeling of self-pity had a ghost, wouldn’t that be just the funniest thing. To be haunted and then promptly killed by the same phantom.

The blood drying on his arms, crusting over old rivulets, is not the work of another. It’s his own, not really needing an explanation but running out of reasons not to. His pulse is starting to feel weaker though it pounds between his ears and it’s only a matter of time.

On the nightstand, where he thought he turned off his phone, it vibrates with an insistent buzz.

He can’t feel his fingers, much less a reason to want to.

~

Bobby pushes off the desk, turning toward it with angry breaths siphoning through his nose. He makes an exasperated noise in the breadth of a sigh, his hands flying in front of him and in one swipe he shoves everything off the desk.

“You stupid, _stupid_ son of a bitch! Well boo hoo, I am so sorry your feelings are hurt, princess! Are you under the impression that family’s supposed to make you feel good? Make you an apple pie, maybe?” He turns on Dean faster than Dean can keep track of. “They’re supposed to make you miserable! That’s why they’re family!”

On the defense, Dean rises to the occasion in hot breaths and clenched fists. His teeth grind against each other, working his jaw to dust. “I told him you walk out that door don’t come back and he _walked_ out anyway! That was his choice!”

“You sound like a whiny brat!” Bobby looks ready to curse and scream at him before burying him alive. The look in his eyes is pure rage—forcing Dean back a step or two when Bobby pursues him, going up in flames because for all Bobby’s been through, Dean doesn’t remember a time he’s ever been so disappointed in him. “Look at you, pissing and moaning here while your brother’s out there doing God knows what with who the hell knows! And you’re sitting like a damn dead duck on the water while there’s a storm brewing outside because you’re too _chicken_ to go out there and make things right.”

Bobby looks close to killing him with the rage that fills him in each breath. “You know what? You’re just like your father, Dean. And I have _always_ believed you were better than him. But right now, you’re acting just like John.”

“My father was a great man,” Dean’s shoulder hikes up with a hiss of his blood curling in his veins. “You don’t talk about him like that.”

“Your father was a coward!”

“You take that back!” Now they’re both shouting at each other and Dean feels every urge to lunge. Raw anger crackles through him like lightning and with their thunderous shouts, it’s only a matter of time before he sinks so low as to attack Bobby like this. “He was the best damn dad there ever was! He sacrificed everything for us and you have no right to talk about him like that.”

Bobby raises a surreptitious brow with a sneer. “He treated you boys like bait. Don’t you tell me what a great man he was,‘cause no great man treats his boys the way he did to you and Sam. Every time he dropped you boys off here I wanted to grab him by his throat and scream at him ‘til he got the memo: you two aren’t soldiers. No son deserves what he put you both through.”

His breaths are hot and heavy. His throat feels like unpaved gravel. “He did what he could for us. He didn’t have a choice.”

“Yeah, and you have the choice to go out there and find your brother before that demon or something else gets him. You’re better than your father, Dean. It’s high time you finally realized that and quit crying every time you and Sam have a disagreement. Now go and get your brother before I get my shotgun.”

Narrowing his eyes, Dean seethes through his teeth. “He’s a big boy. He can do what he wants.”

Bobby raises his eyes to challenge him. “That don’t mean he should.”

~

Labored grunts fill the room as seconds tick by. Sam can’t see himself without feeling dizzy and oh, he can’t see much of anything anymore. But if he could, he knows his skin is an icy white while his arms are sure to be a mess of red going by the pool of blood soaking into the mattress.

He feels heavy and lightweight all at the same time. His arms are heavy, his chest too, while the rest of him feels like it’s floating. He knows how long this takes because it’s not the first time he’s thought of it, but certainly the last. If this doesn’t work, hell, nothing will.

A permanent fix to an ever-evolving problem but the _guilt_ will not just let him be. Everyone will know and shockwaves of his death will ripple throughout the hunting community. Sam will be immortalized as a damn coward and damn, if only he had the energy to care.

There’s a tang of sulfur in the air. Heaven or Hell, it’s not going to make a difference.

He just wants _nothing._

And that’s just the furthest thing from the truth.

In the distance, he hears buzzing on hardwood. The footsteps of housekeeping sweeping past his room, aware of the ‘do not disturb’ placard hung on his door.

Sure enough someone will notice. Maybe not soon enough, and maybe they will come.

Black spots sink into his vision, filling his ears with ringing as if submerged underwater. He takes one last stuttering breath, feeling his fingers twitch and his arm kind of moves, mostly in reflex to the muscle spasming along the length of bone.

When his fingers meet the corner of something hard, he gasps for air like a drowning man will tend to do, letting go with the thump and clatter of heavy objects dropping to the bloodstained floor.

In ice, he is enclosed. His voice sticks in his throat with a dry rasp. His brain taps out a message as the world starts to fade, sounding more like a call in the dark than a satisfied sigh.

His phone muffles itself in the thick carpet. Behind his eyes, if they’re closed, there is no white light. Only darkness.

Maybe they’ll come.

Maybe he will.

**Author's Note:**

> Set between 4x21 and 4x22.
> 
> Thank you for reading.


End file.
